P3RKS S1 Budget Application

Authors: @jazza.eth @pbillingsby.eth @Martin @kempsterrrr @Colin4ward
Supporting Budget Steward(s): @Erik_Knobl @Narb

Links to previous discussion on this topic - [DRAFT 1] - B3NZ Season 1 Budget Application

Summary

This is the P3RKS Project budget application for Season 1. It outlines the high-level goal of the project, how we plan to get there, the team working to make this happen and the proposed budget we’re applying for.

Motivation

Traditional organisations typically provide some kind of benefit to their “employees”. This does not exist for DAO contributors as they are not “employees”, B3NZ seeks to address this by providing benefits to contributors based on the DAO tokens they hold.

Mission, values and goals alignment

The benefits of the P3RKS platform will support DAO contributors across web3 to get discounted access to tooling and services that will help them contribute to the ecosystem. Benefits will likely include discounted Education, Developer/Design tooling and Finance/Tax tooling, plus anything else we can dream up that will benefit DAO Contributors.

Supporting DAO Contributors to learn about and contribute to the web3 ecosystem is well in line with the DAOs stated goals:

  • Onboard, Educate, & Support Web3 Developers
  • Foster & Build Web3 Tools & Public Goods

Brand usage

P3RKS operates under its own brand. However, it does plan to broadcast that it is a project created in Developer DAO and is using Developer DAO as its first test DAO partner. It is however not defining itself as the “Developer DAO X” and intends to become a sustainable project and stand on its own.

So whilst it is not directly operating under the Developer DAO brand it will take advantage of the DAO brand for initial testing, marketing and acquisition. We believe it’s important therefore we return value to the DAO for the platform it is providing.

Scope of work

The long-term goal is a platform DAO Contributors can log in, and authenticate with their Ethereum (and eventually more) wallets to see what DAOs they are part of and what benefits they are therefore entitled to.

The goal is to complete Phase 1 & Phase 2 in Season 1, work on these has started and is progressing nicely. The Stretch goal is progressing to Phase 3 in Season 1.

Phase 1 - Idea Validation (Complete)

  • Engage with existing Developer DAO partners to find out if they are interested in offering benefits to Developer DAO members, what those benefits might be and how they could be delivered to members (kempsterrrr.eth + Colin4Ward)
  • Figure out a low-code way to deliver these benefits to Developer DAO members and track the success with partners and members. Iterate and improve (everyone)
  • Research and identify the best ongoing legal structure for the project and how this would work with regards to being a project built @ Developer DAO and then spun out if successful. (Jazza.eth)
  • Secure grants to fund the initial team working on the project on top of $CODE allocation (Jazza.eth)
  • Decide on architecture and technology stack for platform assuming the idea is successfully validated (MartinB, pbillingsby, Kempsterrrr)

Phase 2 - Build MVP for Developer DAO (if Phase 1 is successful) (Nearly done)

  • Landing page for a project that: a) guides D_D members to a page to redeem benefits based on their holding of the genesis NFT, 2) Guides potential partners to a page where they can submit a form to show interest, 3) Guides DAO to a waitlist where they can submit interest in using the platform
  • Rewards Page - a page that lists benefits available to D_D. Those benefits can only be consumed if they are authenticated with their wallet to prove ownership of the D_D token.
  • Redeem page - unique provider page where contributors can redeem their reward.
  • Create a legal entity with the project founding team.

Phase 3 - Refine and expand to other DAOs

  • Expand the platform to accommodate other DAOs from a technical POV either as a multi-tenant application where DAOs can host their own version on their own subdomain OR continue with a centralised app they can have their own section.
  • Migrate away from a no-code backend solution via Airtable (if this makes sense)
  • Conduct User Research to figure out the best way to evolve the platform for other DAOs
  • Approach and onboard other DAOs

Financial implications

Core Team

  • Kempsterrrr.eth - 10/h - Champion (Product vision/strategy, PartnershipsBD/Marketing and some dev)
  • Jazza.eth - 10/h - Product Management / Design
  • MartinB - 10/h - Full Stack Developer
  • pbillingsby - 10/h - Full Stack Developer
  • Colin4Ward - 2/h Partnerships/BD/Marketing (Advisor)

Total = 42/hours per week

Budget Calculation = 42 hours per week X 16 week Season X 15 $CODE/hr

Total Core Team requested Budget = $10,080

Bounties

We’d like to add 50% to the requested budget to support bounties for welcoming new contributors as we move into Phase 3 of the project.

Bounty pool = $5,040

Total $CODE budget requested = $15,120

NB - The core team are funding all meat space expenses themselves i.e. company setup and any software licenses

Returning value to the DAO

The team is committed to returning value back to the DAO in the following ways:

  • Significant discounts on products/services for members, giving them reduced-cost access and increasing the intrinsic value of membership in the DAO
  • Allocating 7% of any future native token issuing or equity depending on how the project decides to approach this (plans here TBD)

Team

  • @kempsterrrr is the Developer DAO Operations Lead and a full-stack JavaScript Developer
  • @jazza.eth is a core contributor to the design guild, code claim site and other Developer DAO projects.
  • @MartinB is an early contributor to the DAO, very active in the Development and has contributed to several projects including….
  • @pbillingsby is another early contributor to the DAO, very active in the Development Guild and has contributed to several projects including School of Code.
  • @colind4Ward is a core contributor to the MBD Guild helping establish several partnerships and processes there, he will serve as an advisor to the project given his experience as a start-up CEO.

Success Metrics & KPIs

  • Number of partners committed to working with us
  • Number of partners with offers live on the platform
  • Number of DAO Contributors who have used the platform
  • Twitter Following Growth
  • Number of DAOs signing up for our beta list

Next Steps

  • Vote for proposal: Yes/No
  • Launch P3RKS to D_D Community

Vote

  • Yes, I support this budget application
  • No, I do not support this budget application

0 voters

@stewards this proposal still needs someone’s support. @Colin4ward and I cannot do this as we’re on the project cc @Erik_Knobl

As reference, the value proposition of Soil for the DAO.

With the current ideas, which are subject to change, our suggested value split would be:
20% split for D_D treasury on all SBT’s/NFT’s generated within D_D, forever
No subscription fee for the first year
Positioning as a “born in D_D” tool in all soil marketing

Happy to sponsor this project, but I do think we need to have a DAO-wide conversation about the different types of projects, and how they will give value back, so that there is clarity for everyone.

1 Like

tbh I missed that in their proposal but I think 20% is too high. 100% need to have a conversation about this

As a budget steward (until my replacement is found) i support this project

This comes back to the idea of having a standard agreement for new projects. Frankly, I think 20% is much too high. I would rather the DAO leave money on the table than burden projects to the point of being unprofitable/unaffordable.

I think this product makes a ton of sense in one form or another, this team is excellent, and I want to see them succeed. Similar to @Erik_Knobl, I have questions about the budget and DAO-to-project relationship, though.

Yup. Would love thoughts on who might be the best party to be responsible for creating this in Season 1. Possibly either the Fundraising or Coordination Operators?

One of my biggest question marks is this idea. Unless I’m mistaken, project communication is now external to D_D Discord. This might just funnel contributor activity away from the DAO if this project lives externally.

A 7% allocation is potentially meaningful, I don’t mean to dismiss that. Basically this comes down to the community’s comfort in making a more speculative, hands-off investment with its resources, at least in this budget’s current form. TL;DR - defining that standard agreement for projects should be a serious priority for S1.

Basically this comes down to the community’s comfort in making a more speculative, hands-off investment with its resources

Wholly reasonable concern. If the bounties are purely for development there needs to be some way to account for that as “investment” in addition to the support that the 7% figure attempts to honor. One thing that might bring this in-line with S1 priorities is structuring bounties around mentorship opportunities. I don’t think that’s the intention with how they are currently structured, but I agree with Marc - any additional investment by the DAO should be associated with value created within the DAO, and for DAO members (beyond the end result of a cool new product). Short of that, it would be wise not to set the precedent of no-strings-attached seed funding for DAO projects.

I think this product makes a ton of sense in one form or another, this team is excellent, and I want to see them succeed. Similar to @Erik_Knobl, I have questions about the budget and DAO-to-project relationship, though.

My general thoughts are we should seek to support members that want to take advantage of the DAOs network effects to help launch their ideas as long as the value is returned. the question is how is that value returned which we’ve tried to address with the equity / token issuance commitment. FYI the way we’ve structured the UK entity shares was specifically done so to make it easy to allocate that 7% back to the DAO. Do we feel this is not a sufficient value return for the DAO and, if so, how else do you think projects such as this can return value?

Guess I worry if we don’t support folks to launch projects in developer dao in some way they’ll just go and do it somewhere else and no value will be returned. Brings me back to the post a long while ago by @dabit3 about creating a web3 incubator/accelerator in the DAO.

If we became known as a place where successful projects are started that is good on multiple levels in-terms of intrinsic value in membership and potentially long-term treasury growth if people allocate %s back to the DAO for providing this value.

One of my biggest question marks is this idea. Unless I’m mistaken, project communication is now external to D_D Discord. This might just funnel contributor activity away from the DAO if this project lives externally.

We have created another server as it was becoming really challenging to manage/structure comms in a sustainable way. If we’re going to support projects that are going to spin out of the DAO I doubt our discord can support many of them so maybe we need to think about how this is handled better.

I’m not deeply passionate about this bounty pool tbh if folks are uncomfortable with it I’m happy to remove it. We hadn’t thought a huge amount about exactly how to allocate it the idea was to have it available and then we’d figure out a way to do so as people were requesting to get involved. maybe short-sighted in hindsight.

@Colin4ward - but I agree with Marc - any additional investment by the DAO should be associated with value created within the DAO, and for DAO members (beyond the end result of a cool new product)

What constitutes value within the DAO? does the project need to forever live inside the DAO? is returning value to the treasury not within the DAO? these are some important questions we clearly need to think about.

as for the agreements between DAO vs not DAO, @Colin4ward and I have been speaking about this and plan to start looking at specific set-ups and agreements in the coming weeks. there is though a difference between things that are created by the DAO and then soun vs things that are created by members as entirely separate projects but supported by the DAO and figuring out that balance is key IMHO.

Budget Update

TLDR

MVP for Perks is out and functioning, members can log in on our site and redeem benefits. We paused active work on the platform for around a month post S1 launch whilst I was focused on that ($CODE, Foundation, Budgets etc.) but have since brought on @Bobbay to lead partnership and will be adding a lot more partners in the coming weeks. Watch out for announcements.

We’re now focused on making this the best product it can be for Developer DAO with the community guilds support and user feedback from members.

We have not allocated any of our $CODE yet. We’re planning to use this to incentivise and reward people who advise the project and provide invaluable user feedback to improve it as bounties (this includes new folks joining the DAO and the Community Guild)

Milestones

  • Phase 1 complete

  • Phase 2 complete

  • Phase 3 - many assumptions were made for this stage and, rather than push forward with those we’re investing more time to speak with users in D_D & partnerships to inform what we build next to ensure it maximises value for the user it serves.

Budget amends

No amends requested at this time

1 Like

To add to this!

  • We secured some small grant funding from Radicle for helping alpha test their decentralised Git service
  • We intend to pursue other grants
  • We’re still committed to the original intention of issuing value back to the DAO via a token launch if/when we do that, or comparable value if we do not
1 Like

gm, steward duty :rotating_light:

glad to hear of resumed efforts here and look forward to more partner updates! MVP looks and works great.

clarification required: original core team has 42hr/wk spec’ed out, none allocated yet, and request for continuation to fund future bounties/contributions. you mentioned Bobby coming on, but maybe a status update as to the other contributors. are they due something? are any still to get rewards on an ongoing basis, or is the whole 42 hr/wk number allocated for a pool now, adding to the bounty pool? i think a budget amendment statement would be useful, even if it just shows realignment of current budget.

1 Like

thanks for the question!

To be honest we don’t have a budget amendment or projection at this time. We’ve chosen not to reward ourselves (thus far) in elevated $CODE and have come to realise it could be better allocated towards members, likely skewing towards new members as first-time users are the most valuable learning opportunity for us, than reward ourselves.

Current discussions are we reward folks happy to do user research interviews @ $50 to $100 CODE per interview (massively higher than the 15 $ CODE/hour rate) and explore how we can reward other folks advising the project such as the community guild team.

The core team is currently doing about that, maybe more, so in theory, I think we could provide a budget and justifies rewarding ourselves at this level, but the intention is to pass that back to DAO members for helping us build out the product.

tbh I’m not sure how to handle this and it brings into question some of the challenges with the current structure/rewards model raised in Can we build a better game?.

There have been a few instances where I’ve sent some of my personal allocation of $CODE to folks who’ve provided feedback or reported bugs but noting out of our treasury thus far.

ofc open to ideas/critiques/feedback/challenges etc.

another question this raisess is if the DAO can amend the $CODE budget allocated (happy to go with the flow as this is the point of stewards) can those who’ve promised future value return to amend the terms for that?

again this is exposing flaws in the current system and very healthy debate